[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Underachievement rates among those gifted children

[Shaun Hately]

On 29 May 2002 at 20:53, ssk7882 (Elkins) wrote:

Elkins:   
> Now, admittedly I have no particular expertise in this field -- and 
> certainly none to match your own -- but I have done a bit of reading 
> on the subject as it is, for purely autobiographical reasons, one of 
> considerable personal interest to me, and I'd been rather assuming 
> that the source of your claim that 50% of the students in the top IQ 
> range "underachieve" was the 1991 VanTassel-Baska study.  Correct me 
> if I'm wrong, but I'd been assuming that that was your main source.

That's not the source - however it was one of the starting points.

There's been a lot of new research done over the last 7 years, a fair amount of 
which hasn't been formally published yet - much to my chagrin, because I have 
written a chapter of one of the books that is sitting around waiting for publication (-8 
I don't know the exact reasons for the delays - the papers and books are ready, and 
have often been accepted for publication - then they just sit there.

But part of the impetus for all the recent work has been attempts to verify and clarify 
work done in the mid and late 1980s by people such as VanTassel-Baska, Winner, 
Rimm. As part of that definitions and ideas were examined, looking for bias, 
whether conscious or unconscious.

In particular, in this area, discrepancies between Winner's work on emotional health 
among giftyed students, and Van Tassel's 'at-risk' study were noted. And so, new 
research has been done on underachievement using the definition I've given - a 
sample size of around 1400 students IIRC. That study isn't ready for publication yet 
- they'd like to double the sample size, and part of the study is intended to continue 
for at least another five years to study medium term effects, but it's found around 
half of all gifted children underachieve to at least a moderate level, under the 
definition I gave. It's not the same 50% group as identified in previous studies - but 
the numbers overall are similar.

Elkins:
> So *are* there, in fact, any studies that have used the definition 
> that you gave above as their standard, and then gone on to find 
> similarly high rates of underachieving among the top twentieth 
> percentile?  

I'm fairly sure that some details of the study I mentioned have been published in 
Roeper Review - but I'll need to check that next time I am at Melbourne University 
which may not be for a while. Most of the study hasn't been.  

And we don't use the top twentieth percentile. While 'gifted' doesn't have a totally 
firm definition, most academic research concentrates on a top 5%, 3% or 2% 
definition.

Elkins:
> So someone is an "underachiever" if he has failed to reach the goals
> that he has set for himself?  That seems a quite reasonable definition
> to me.  It does make me wonder, though, how you go about determining 
> whether the problem lies in the ability to achieve, or in the 
> original selection of goal?  In other words, how can one rule out the 
> possibility that the child may not have simply set his sights a bit 
> too high in the first place?  And how do you determine whether a 
> change in goal later in life is to be considered "legitimate" or to 
> be framed in terms of a symptom of the dread Underachievement 
> Syndrome?

This is one area where testing comes in. Both 'ability' and 'achievement' tests are 
used to give an indication of where a child's realistic ability level lies. Then you 
compare it to their actual level of achievement. Minor discrepancies aren't 
considered important - an 8 year old capable of 9th Grade mathematics, who is 
doing 7th grade wouldn't be considered as underachieving - but if they were doing 
4th grade, the possibility would be examined. Checks would be made to try and 
identify learning disabilities that might be having an effect, the child's desire to be 
working at a higher level would be assessed etc. If we could be confident that no 
LDs existed, and if the child wanted to work at a higher standard than they are, we'd 
be fairly sure there was an underachievement issue involved. That, in itself, 
wouldn't be a problem necessarily - unless it persisted, and was causing distress, 
*or* if we could clearly identify reasons it was occurring that needed to be addressed 
(for example, if a teacher is *preventing* the child advancing beyond a certain level 
without good reason).

As for changing goals, we basically accept them as the child's right to change. If we 
think they are making a mistake, we may advise against it and explain why we think 
it's a mistake - but really it's their choice in the end, and our responsibility is to help 
it happen.

Elkins:
> So when my reaction to the statement that fifty percent (or perhaps 
> even more) of students in the very top percentile of the IQ range go 
> on to become "underachievers" was "Well, of *course* they do!" -- 
> well, I really wasn't speaking with my tongue in my cheek.  What I 
> meant to imply there was that it is really only to be expected that 
> so many of us will hold very different ideas about what constitutes 
> an "appropriate" outlet for our efforts, and that this is likely to 
> be much of what then leads to our classification as "underachievers."

Yes, these are very real problems. But part of the problem is that comparatively 
little research has been done into the 160+IQ group - EG/PG kids. There has been 
an assumption among many researchers that the 'gifted' are a discrete group with a 
huge commonality of needs and desires. And that assumption is simply wrong. But 
this has been changing - and groups like the GDC, Davison Foundation, etc, have 
been working to change it.

There is research dating back to the 1940s on these issues - but a lot of it was 
ignored for over 40 years and is only recently being 'rediscovered'.
 
Elkins: 
> Of course, I realize that your concern for this boy is that he might 
> lose his desire to learn.  You say as much.  But the terms "learning" 
> and "school" get sort of conflated in your statement, with "giving up 
> on school" and "losing the desire to learn" becoming viewed as almost 
> synonymous, and this strikes me as significant because I think that 
> it is very much the same conflation that leads to that definition 
> of "achievement" that I find so very troubling when it is applied to 
> the profoundly gifted.  

Part of the problem is that school is a reality we have to address. The vast majority 
of children are in school (although, interestingly, there's some evidence that half of 
all PG children are now 'homeschooled' - their parents have abandoned the 
'education system' completely). For this kid, for reasons I can't go into because of 
confidentially concerns, taking this kid out of school is not an option (at the moment 
- we're working on that).

I don't generally place 'schooling' and 'learning' as synonyms - but in this case, the 
schooling this boy is enduring is having a very negative impact on his desire to 
learn at all. He's beginning to hate mathematics, because his experience of it at 
school is so negative. What we want is really to just get that to 'neutral' rather than 
negative. Anything else would be a bonus.

Elkins:
> First, it worries me that if this kid does eventually decide, for 
> whatever reason, that his interests lie in some other arena -- 
> perhaps even in one much further outside of his particular domain of 
> specialty -- that this will be viewed as a symptom of failure.  There 
> is often, in my experience, a sense that extraordinary precocity in 
> some particular field imbues one with a kind of *obligation* to adopt 
> that field as ones major focus of interest for the rest of ones 
> life.  Indeed, it's usually the case when you are very young that 
> your particular area of talent strikes you as by far the most 
> intriguing or exciting -- sometimes for the simple reason that it's 
> really very gratifying to be so good at it, and to get all of the 
> praise and attention that goes along with that.  As people get older, 
> though, the fields outside of their particular domains can start to 
> seem far more interesting -- sometimes because they are more 
> challenging, sometimes because they are new and exciting, sometimes 
> simply because people's interests do change as they get older.  

These are certainly valid concerns - but they are ones that the program I work in, 
and the research bodies who our work is based on - are well aware of, and try to 
avoid. We certainly do not view changing your interests as any type of failure - 
because, most of us, have done it ourselves.
 
> Abandoning the field of interest that most interested you as a child, 
> however, is one of the primary behaviors that researchers have 
> identified as symptomatic of "prodigy burn-out," or of the 
> Underachiever Syndrome.  I personally find this rather disturbing.

Yes - and this is one of the primary reasons so much new research is being done, 
and new paradigms are being examined. We're moving away from 'external' goals 
except ones people create for themselves, and external measures of success, and 
our focus is on ensuring these kids grow up... well, happy.

Take me - I had to endure a very inappropriate education - gifted education was 
extremely 'politically incorrect' where and when I was growing up. My experiences 
left me a clinical depressive between age 18 and 22 - probably a lot earlier than 18, 
that was the date of formal diagnoses, I was probably CD at 12.

Many of the people involved in the research now are people like me, or the parents 
of kids like me - one of the top researchers into PG children, Professor Miraca 
Gross, was 'just a mother' 15 years ago, and quite a number of the academics 
involved came into this after parenting these kids. The primary desire is to ensure 
mental health - other stuff is less important, especially 'achievement' as measured 
by society in general.

And a lot of us have changed our paths in life. I started out at University studying 
my childhood dream - Astronomy and Astrophysics. I changed over to Software 
Engineering, left uni in the middle of my degree to work on the Y2K bug, and have 
spent 3 years working IT - a job I find OK, but I'm not passionate about - I'm only 
doing it at the moment becasue the work I do is very specialised and not many 
people can do it, and it may save lives, so I haven't thrown it in yet - as of January, I 
doubt I'll be doing it anymore, because there will be people to replace me. And I'm 
likely going back to University to gain academic qualifications revolving around 
gifted kids (I've been offered free tuition and text books, etc, to do so - and while I 
don't think I need the paper qualifications, I love the idea of going back to 
university).

I'd hardly regard changing your life's choices as a failure - and most of the people I 
know of, involved in advocacy for these kids, have changed at least once 
themselves.

Elkins:
>There is.  I do find myself questioning, though, the assumption that 
> all of the purported cases of people's paths being cut off are really 
> that at all. Certainly it sometimes happens.  The desire to learn can 
> be quelled, and it all too often is.  But I cannot escape the 
> suspicion that many of the studies showing this problem as so 
> widespread -- afflicting fifty percent of the population, and so 
> forth -- are reaching those conclusions in part because they are 
> looking at all of the wrong things.

That's certainly possible. No body of research can ever be considered perfect. But 
we try. And we look at the mistakes we've made in the past - and try to learn from 
them, and correct them if we can.





Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately |webpage: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       |email: drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in
common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter
the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen
to be one of the facts that need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who:
The Face of Evil | Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia